One of the most
influential Marxist theorists of the twentieth century, Henri Lefebvre first
published Marxist Thought and the City in French in 1972,
marking a pivotal point in his evolution as a thinker and an important
precursor to his groundbreaking work of urban sociology, The Production
of Space. Marxist Thought and the City—inwhich he reviews the
work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for commentary and analysis on the life
and growth of the city—now appears in English for the first time.

Rooted in orthodox
Marxism’s analyses of capitalism and the capitalist mode of production, with
extensive quotations from the works of Marx and Engels, this book describes the
city’s transition from life under feudalism to modern industrial capitalism. In
doing so it highlights the various forces that sought to maintain power in the
struggles between the medieval aristocracy and the urban guilds, amid the
growth of banking and capital.

Providing vital
background and supplementary material to Lefebvre’s other books, including The
Urban Revolution and Right to the City, Marxist Thought and
the City is indispensable for students and scholars of urbanism,
Marxism, social geography, early modern history, and the history of economic
thought.

Three audio recordings of Lefebvre. The first from 1975 is
the most wide-ranging; the second is a brief discussion from 1970 that
discusses La fin de l’histoire; and the third is on space. There is also this video interview.

Cities & SpacePosted by Les Roberts 11 Feb, 2014 13:16:44A podcast of Will Self in discussion with Patrick Keiller and Matthew Beaumont at the LRB bookshop can be accessed on the writer's website: here

A previously unpublished manuscript by Henri Lefebvre, Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment
is forthcoming with University of Minnesota Press. Edited by Łukasz
Stanek and translated by Robert Bonnano, this is going to be a
significant moment in the discussion of his work, especially since the
manuscript remains unpublished in French.

The relationship between bodily pleasure, space, and
architecture—from one of the twentieth century’s most important urban
theorists Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment,
the first publication of Henri Lefebvre’s only book devoted to
architecture, redefines architecture as a mode of imagination rather
than a specialized process or a collection of monuments. Lefebvre calls
for an architecture of jouissance—of pleasure or enjoyment—centered on
the body and its rhythms and based on the possibilities of the senses.

During his lifetime Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) was renowned in France as a philosopher, sociologist and activist. Although he published more than 70 books, few were available in English until The Production of Space was translated in 1991. While this work – often associated with geography – has influenced educational theory’s ‘spatial turn,’ educationalists have yet to consider Lefebvre’s work more broadly.

This book engages in an educational reading of the selection of Lefebvre’s work that is available in English translation. After introducing Lefebvre’s life and works, the book experiments with his concepts and methods in a series of five ‘spatial histories’ of educational theories. In addition to The Production of Space, these studies develop themes from Lefebvre’s other translated works: Rhythmanalysis, The Explosion, the three volumes ofCritique of Everyday Life and a range of his writings on cities, Marxism, technology and the bureaucratic state. In the course of these inquiries, Lefebvre’s own passionate interest in education is uncovered: his critiques of bureaucratised schooling and universities, the analytic concepts he devised to study educational phenomena, and his educational methods.

Throughout the book Middleton demonstrates how Lefebvre’s conceptual and methodological tools can enhance the understanding of the spatiotemporal location of educational philosophy and theory. Bridging disciplinary divides, it will be key reading for researchers and academics studying the philosophy, sociology and history of education, as well as those working in fields beyond education including geography, history, cultural studies and sociology.

Essays by the iconic British filmmaker on the relationship between film, cities and landscape

“Robinson believed that, if he looked at it hard enough, he could cause the surface of the city to reveal to him the molecular basis of historical events, and in this way he hoped to see into the future.”

In his sequence of films, Patrick Keiller retraces the hidden story of the places where we live, the cities and landscapes of our everyday lives. Referencing writers such as Benjamin and Lefebvre, this collection follows his career since the late 1970s, exploring themes including the surrealist perception of the city; the relationship of architecture and film; how cities change over time, and how films represent this; as well as accounts of cross-country journeys involving historical figures, unexpected ideas and an urgent portrait of post-crash Britain.

The view from above, or the "birds-eye" view, has become so ingrained in contemporary visual culture that it is now hard to imagine our world without it. It has risen to pre-eminence as a way of seeing, but important questions about its effects and meanings remain unexplored. More powerfully than any other visual modality, this image of "everywhere" supports our idea of a world-view, yet it is one that continues to be transformed as technologies are invented and refined. This innovative volume, edited by Mark Dorrian and Frederic Pousin, offers an unprecedented range of discussions on the aerial view, covering topics that range from sixteenth-century Roman maps, to the Luftwaffe's aerial survey of Warsaw, to Google Earth. Underpinned by a cross-disciplinary approach that draws together diverse and previously isolated material, this volume examines the politics and poetics of the aerial view in relation to architecture, art, film, literature, photography and urbanism and explores its role in areas such as aesthetics and epistemology. Structured through a series of detailed case studies, this book builds into a cultural history of the aerial imagination.